by LW Herndon
“See it now?”
“Yes. You can’t stay away from playing with fire power, can you?” I said, teasing her. Her control over the flame was good and her increased confidence level encouraged me that she would come up to speed quickly with other skills as well.
She gave an exasperated sigh, released her tug on the candle, and placed the slides in boxes on her desk. “I thought you would be impressed with my progress.”
It was only with a second’s warning of a cold chill that I moved in time to push Anne to the floor and shield her from the blast. She crouched beneath her table and looked around my legs to see one angry-ass demon.
Decibel moved with purpose, intending to get around me.
“I have an explanation,” I said.
“There is no explanation.” Decibel released another volt of energy and nicked the chair next to Anne.
“She’s not part of the Consortium.”
“What a relief. So you’re protecting her until she decides to join them?”
She moved again.
“She’s researching the organism.”
Decibel paused and narrowed her eyes. “You are a fool. She probably constructed the parasites.”
“She hasn’t constructed anything. She just learned about her abilities recently.”
“You know this how?” Decibel’s eyes opened wider. “You will not tell me you helped turn a sorcerer on to her powers?”
“Wizard. Not sorcerer.” I struggled to my feet, crossed my arms, and glared back at her as she paced back and forth before me. She was still waiting for an opening to disintegrate Anne into cinders. “The Consortium is killing their own.”
“This should be a point to rejoice. Not a time to salvage them so they can rise again.”
“That would make us no better than them.”
“They are killing our own. That makes them fair targets.”
“She’s helping me. I won’t allow you to harm her.”
“You mistakenly think you are impervious to death, Kane. And you mistakenly think I care whether you live.”
I never had a lot of doubt on either point, but I knew she needed me alive for more reasons than she’d vocalized. I flexed my hands, preparing for an assault, just in case I was wrong. “The goal here is to stop the Consortium, to stop the murders of the Irin and the enslavement of demons. I only added a few more people to the mix.”
Decibel offered me a mean, sarcastic smile. “And to our efforts we now add saving all the sor—wizard neophytes. I think not.”
“I’m not here to save the world. I’m just asking you to leave her alone.” I let out an exasperated sigh. “Let her help us.”
Decibel glared at both of us. Wisely, Anne had been silent. “A promise, Kane. No more wizards.”
I stretched my neck for a second. All my best efforts were imploding. I could feel the vortex close in, about to suffocate me in my own good intentions. “I can’t do that.”
“You have more of them.” Decibel stomped away and back again. “You are addled in the brain. One of these battles must have caused catastrophic hemorrhage. You’ve lost the ability to reason.”
I waited, knowing she’d wind down soon. Given her vocal assault in lieu of a physical one, I could feel an end in sight. Though after she blew out this bit of fury, I couldn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t take another swipe at Anne, but I counted every minute as one more for Decibel to come closer to my terms.
She waved a frenzied hand in my face. “Do you have a club of little wizcateers? Little misbegotten children that have to be saved? Have you no sense what these creatures are capable of?”
“I am very clear on the danger from the Consortium.”
“Not so.” She waved a hand at Anne behind me.
“Samuel is one,” I said quietly.
She stopped and stared. The mutinous look was still on her face, but she’d paused in her tirade. “Unfortunate. But no excuse.” However, her anger had ratcheted down several notches.
“There is a young brother and sister as well.”
She snorted her anger and raised her hands in defeat. “You do have a stash of them. What? Is she the mother you’ve rounded up for all of them? A Wendy Darling for the Peter Pan of lost wizard children.” She peered around me to Anne. “Make that grandmother.”
“Hey,” shouted Anne.
I knew I was too lucky for the quiet behind me to last for long.
“Children are one thing. He has a weakness for them.” Decibel shook a finger at Anne. “You are expendable.”
“Look, you pushy bit of horned goddess, or whatever you are—” Anne revved up, ready to fight back.
“STOP.” I pushed with enough force to move them both back several steps. At least the distraction got them to shut up for a moment. “I don’t have the time to arbitrate this fiasco.”
I turned to Decibel. “I chose to shelter Anne. I chose to initiate her powers over allowing her death. I chose to have her help us.”
I turned back to Anne, who was looking smugly at her demon counterpart. “And you need to learn to work with her. You don’t have to like each other to work toward the same end. She is fighting to save lives.”
Anne glared at Decibel, who folded her arms and glared right back.
Just what I needed, to have to referee a demon-mage chick battle. At least they remained quiet, so I took a stab at focusing back on the serious problem. “We need to figure out how to neutralize the parasite, regardless of the mutation.”
Anne took a deep breath and pulled out a chair at the table. “That’s a tall order given we don’t know all the permutations it can handle.”
“How about something like chemo?” I asked.
“The application might as easily kill the host.”
“She won’t be able to help us,” Decibel muttered and turned her back to look around Anne’s house.
Anne watched Decibel move through the room and frowned.
I snapped my fingers in front of her nose. “Back to our problem.”
“Yeah. Well, maybe an antibiotic. Something that cohabitates with and inhibits the mutation.”
“Better. But we’ll need a work-around in case anyone gets infected before we have that.”
She nodded. “Tricky, given we don’t have any of the unmutated parasites.”
Decibel’s body swayed with exaggerated sarcasm. “Right. Let’s get her some parasites so she can play with them.”
I ignored them for a minute and thought back to the images in candlelight.
“Do we know for certain how they survive in the body?”
“Not entirely.”
Decibel snorted, and Anne glared at the demon.
“But since they become active in the bloodstream and Samuel’s interact only inside his wounds, it’s a fair assumption that fresh blood is initially the key. That doesn’t rule out that they can act independently of their connection with blood,” Anne said.
“Genius.” Decibel snapped her fingers in sarcasm. “We already knew that from Sol’s infection. They moved to his brain.”
“They may have been programmed to mutate there.” Anne added as a perplexed look morphed in her features. “Was Sol human?”
“No,” Decibel snapped back. “But they use the humans for low-level tasks. They must have assumed he was. He knew the infection was there and that he had lost control at the end. Perhaps the parasites attack the mind to wrestle control so it’s easier to retrieve information.”
Decibel looked to the floor for a second and back to me. “Even I didn’t detect their presence.”
“Probably because they are part organic,” Anne said. “A component would naturally blend with the body and the rest—”
Decibel frowned at the implications.
“How would they know what to look for in designing the parasite for specific hosts?” I asked.
“They would just need time and resources,” said Decibel.
“Time they’ve had.” How much time concerned me,
given the Consortium’s activities spanned years.
“Would they have used their power to come up with this organism?” Anne asked.
Decibel looked suitably horrified, but she gave Anne’s comment some thought. “It’s possible. I know little about the makeup of the members of the Consortium. They could have biomedical engineers in the group, for all we know.”
Creepy thought. It was bad enough to have magic out of control without adding complex science into the mix.
“Or a creative artist,” said Anne.
I glance at Anne, puzzled.
“Well, like watching grass grow. If I can see it grow, I can speed it up or slow it down. Or construct something similar. I don’t need to know how it works. I assume that if one can imagine a concept, it might be possible to actually…” She opened her palm, searching for a word and then shrugged. “Create it, I suppose.”
“Manifest,” said Decibel.
Anne snapped her fingers. “Exactly, manifest it into reality?”
I let out a strained sigh. Shit. “What if the organism was dormant and not active yet? Would I be able to detect it? Or could they manifest at will?”
“Double shit,” said Decibel.
I turned away from the two women, considering the possibility that Marco carried the parasite, one specifically designed for the wizard skills he possessed. If so, what about Aisha?
The Consortium seemed unaware of female wizards. I’d run into none in my work for Shalim, so it could be that they were either scarce, or the current members of the Consortium weren’t aware that they existed. It took real ego to think that only men were imbued with great magical power. Granted, the Consortium didn’t lack for ego.
“If I get you some more samples, can you safely check fresh blood for parasites? We need a fix or stall for the problem, quickly.”
Decibel raised an eyebrow at me but said nothing.
“I believe so. Yes,” said Anne. “Not sure about the fix, Kane.”
“If wishes and buts were candy and nuts—” Decibel started.
I held up my hand. “Fine, we’ll be back later. Maybe you’ll be able to find something to unmanifest the organism.”
“Anything’s possible, but don’t hold your breath,” said Anne.
I headed for the back door, held it open, and then gestured for Decibel to precede me.
“So now you want me to accompany you?”
“For the time being.” For once, I wanted her under my very watchful eye.
***
We stopped long enough for Decibel to misappropriate some supplies at the hospital to take blood cultures and then headed out to Ray’s. I delivered a dire warning for her not to frighten or attack the kids. I didn’t know if she would comply, but she was at least silent until we got halfway to the house.
“They’re consolidating their power base,” she said.
The Consortium?
“Yes,” she said.
“Don’t do that. Stay out of my head.”
“You could talk to me instead of shielding yourself all the time.”
I stifled the urge to give her a dose of my annoyance. “To what end?”
She picked up where she left off. “The Consortium sorcerers are all born human. They aren’t random mutations like the Irin. Their power expands to whatever level they can achieve, but their pool of resources is finite and their longevity as well.”
“You already knew this.” I’d gone to all the effort with Naberius to find the same details, and she had the information all along.
She nodded. “That you confirmed it is helpful. Some details are so old it is difficult to separate truth from fable.”
Now if we could just determine who was running the endgame.
“I concur with a higher motive and another player.”
“Dec, stay out of my thoughts.” I considered the puzzle and turned it around. Fewer wizards, more power for the few who turned sorcerer. More wizards, less power and a weaker sorcerer base. “If there were enough of them, they would, essentially, have no power. They’d be almost human.” I was nudging her toward viewing Anne’s and the kids’ presence as a good thing.
She snorted, having none of it and obviously still mind reading. “Or one could eradicate the entire pool of resources and have no problem as well.”
“Can that be done?”
“Once before.”
There was new information. “When?”
“In a long-ago purging.” A need-to-know tidbit that Decibel wasn’t giving up.
“Then how is it back?”
She sighed. “A random event in the human genetic chain, a result of the children of Enoch. At some point, it reappeared over hundreds of years. Those with the ability worked back to a level of adaptation and manipulation.”
Okay, interesting, but it didn’t help me right now. We got out of the car and headed to the front door. Ray let us both inside but kept his weapon secure in his lap and kept his distance from Decibel. The man had good instincts.
“So what brings you back so quick?”
“I need to check the kids, and I need some of their blood.” I hefted the blood culture kit so he could see it clearly.
Ray scrutinized Decibel but waved us to the living room, where the kids were ensconced on the couch, watching TV. He kept himself silently between her and the kids.
Decibel ignored him, but her eyes narrowed as she scrutinized Aisha and Marco. I could almost feel the thoughts coming out of her head, but her flaming fingers remained motionless.
Aisha looked up as I walked over. Her expression was hesitant and cautious, though without fear. At least I hadn’t permanently scarred her earlier today. Marco paid no attention at all. He lay on the couch, eyes closed, feigning sleep.
“What’s up?” asked Aisha.
I sat on the coffee table and set the blood kit next to me as she eyed the kit skeptically, waiting for an answer. “I need to show you how to run a test on yourself and your brother. How to detect if there is something that’s not supposed to be in your body.” I put a hand on the kit. “And then I need to take a blood sample from each of you.”
Marco’s eyes suddenly opened wide. “No.”
Aisha reached for her brother, but he cringed away.
I looked to her and held out my hand. “If we start with you, he can see that it’s not going to hurt.”
She gave a look that clearly said I was full of shit, but she pursed her lips and gave me her hand.
“I’m going to teach you a method for scanning.”
“Like before?”
“Not exactly. I’m going to focus on you. You need to relax and accept the focus. Then I can guide you through it and point out what to look for.”
Again with the skeptical look.
“Just close your eyes and relax your breathing. Count your breaths in and out.”
“Silly yoga stuff?”
Decibel met my look over Aisha’s head and rolled her eyes. I frowned at her with a quick thought in my mind not to disrupt the girl.
“Yes, like that. Now relax.”
I waited for her to begin; then I closed my eyes and focused. When her breathing measured light and steady, I proceeded through her hand and deep into her body. Aisha was still young, her essence soft and palpable to me. I focused around her veins and her heart and gave a gentle touch. Her heart thumped erratically in response. I focused a shield around her essence, a soft cotton sheeting wrapped loosely around her, and slid her with me through various places in her body. We checked her heart and her major arteries, her spinal column, her brain. I was a breeze that floated through her, pausing for her to sense, feel, and take in what she saw. What seemed like hours were only minutes, but they would be draining minutes for someone this young and inexperienced. I didn’t linger but pulled out gently and released my focus on her.
She opened her eyes and glanced around the room. Her gaze shifted quickly to Marco, who stared intently at her, evidently scanning for signs of abuse. She shrugg
ed and held out her hands, like “no problem.”
“Now let’s try Marco.”
He shrank back into the couch cushions again.
She looked at me, and I nodded for her to take his hand.
“Come on, you didn’t use to be such a pussy,” she taunted her brother. He snapped his hand into hers with a frown.
I glanced back toward Ray, who had shifted uncomfortably in his chair at the comment and the breaking of his rules, but I made a gesture to stop any remark he might make.
She looked to me for the next step, and I took her other hand.
“I want you to focus again, but you need to concentrate your focus on Marco. I’ll help this time. First think about his hand, how it feels in yours, then his breathing, and then follow with me.”
She was uncertain but nodded and closed her eyes. It took several minutes for her breathing to steady. I met her focus where her hand joined with Marco’s and I followed the connection into the boy’s body. When she didn’t cross with me, I circled back to attach her with me. I couldn’t shield her and take her in because I needed her to know what this felt like so she could establish the same path later on her own. The attachment would pull her along with me, but leave her free to sensations.
Together we crossed deep into Marco. Her resistance diminished as we followed along in his body and checked the same organs that we’d checked in hers. I saw no sign of parasites, but there was damage to the heart and lungs, evidence of the drug use. Aisha’s focus fluttered as she became aware of the same thing. I gave her a gentle push, and we retreated from Marco’s body.
She opened her eyes, fatigue and worry lingering there. I could do nothing about the worry. A little well-placed fear could be the difference between life and death. The fatigue would diminish with rest and, ultimately, when she had exercised her skills enough.
“I have one more thing to show you.” I held out my hand, and this time she was reluctant, as if she sensed this would be bad. “It will only be a second, and it is only an image.”
She placed her hand in mine and closed her eyes.
I kept my eyes open and framed the image of the organism in Sol’s and Samuel’s bodies. I would have kept the blood and the wound from her if I could have, but I couldn’t doctor the image. It was reality. I had no ability to conjure dreams.